Thunderbirds (series)

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Missing mention of a few Lady Penelope comics but the most obvious absence is The Man from MI.5

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Thunderbirds
Publisher:	City Magazines
Type:	TV series Comic series
Release date:	30 September 1965

Thunderbirds was a science fiction series created by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson. Originally running as an animated puppet series, Thunderbirds was also spun off into spin-off comics published in TV Century 21 alongside The Daleks. TV Century 21 also published comics and short stories starring Thunderbirds character Lady Penelope.

Crossovers with the DWU

1960s

As the conceit of TV Century 21 was that all its series took place in a single universe, several Thunderbirds stories from its pages crossed over freely with the DWU. This mostly included allusions to Lady Penelope or International Rescue's activities in the prose "cover stories", but also Lady Penelope being the narrator and main protagonist of a short story tying in with the release of Dr. Who and the Daleks in 1965.

One two-page comic story also involved Penelope in a multi-series crossover story arc with Fireball XL5 and Stingray centering on the DWU planet of Astra. Another Thunderbirds comic story crossed over both with the DWU and with Fireball XL5 by featuring Nikita Bandranaik and Wilbur Zero.

In 1966, the television series of Thunderbirds briefly crossed over with Doctor Who. In The Man from MI.5, the Daleks made a licensed appearance in the form of a report from the Solturian News Agency, the final page of The Penta Ray Factor in TV21 32 in the real world. Not only did this mark the first time the Daleks appeared outside of Doctor Who, ironically on the BBC's main competitor ITV, but it also constituted the televised debuts of the Dalek Prime and the rank of Dalek Emperor, predating their Who debuts in The Evil of the Daleks by over a year.

In addition to these "one-off" crossovers, Thunderbirds stories featured concepts which debuted in The Daleks on a semi-regular basis. The final panel of The Daleks strip was usually one or two "Stop Press" news stories, continuing the idea that the entire contents of TV21 was part of a fictionalised newspaper from the future and offering readers a teaser of the events of the next issue. As well as often referencing future Dalek comic stories, it also regularly referred to the other strips in the magazine. This meant, for example, that the invisible ray torch seen in The Vanishing Ray actually made its debut in The Menace of the Monstrons. Direct sequels or continuations to crossover stories printed in TV21 also occassionally appeared in its sister magazine, Lady Penelope.

The following Thunderbirds stories involved DWU elements and are thus covered on this Wiki:

Title	Issue	Featuring	Released
Mr. Steelman	TV21 1-11	Lady Penelope, Parker, Roger, Mr Steelman	23 January - 3 April 1965
Lady Penelope	TV21 19	Lady Penelope, Parker, Zodiac, Zero, Lugosti	29 May 1965
The Return of Mr. Steelman	TV21 20-34	Lady Penelope, Parker, Mr Steelman	5 June - 11 September 1965
Lady Penelope Investigates the stars of the Sensational new film Dr. Who and the Daleks!	TV21 28	Lady Penelope, Parker	31 July 1965
The Vanishing Ray	TV21 44-51	Lady Penelope, Parker, Jeff, Brains, the Hood	20 November 1965 - 8 January 1966
The Man from MI.5	N/A (ITV)	Lady Penelope, Parker, Jeff, Brains, Scott, Virgil, Alan, Gordon, John, Tin-Tin, Grandma, Bondson	20 January 1966
The Great Silver Robbery!	LP 17-28	Lady Penelope, Parker, Mr Steelman	14 May - 30 July 1966
The Assassination Threat	LP 29-35	Lady Penelope, Parker, Roger	6 August - 17 September 1966
Solar Danger	TV21 83-98	Jeff, Brains, Scott, Virgil, Alan, Gordon, John, Tin-Tin, Zero, Bandranaik	20 August - 3 December 1966
Desert Drama	LP 43-52	Lady Penelope, Parker, Bondson, Mr Steelman	12 November 1966 - 14 January 1967

Later crossovers

Lady Penelope would later make one last cameo in the DWU in The Dying Days.

In The Lodger, the Eleventh Doctor also namedrops International Rescue as part of the line "I'm Captain Troy Handsome of International Rescue". In Resurrection of the Daleks, the guards on the Prison Station wear uniforms similar to those worn by the main characters in Thunderbirds.

Additionally, the Second Doctor novel The Indestructible Man features many elements that were borrowed from three of Gerry Anderson's series: Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons, and UFO, although under thin aliases rather than an explicit crossover.

Cast and crew connections

The original Thunderbirds TV series from 1965-1966 featured the voices of a number of actors who also played roles on Doctor Who, such as Shane Rimmer, Jeremy Wilkin, David Graham and Ray Barrett. Cliff Richard and John Carson were involved in the feature-lengths films Thunderbirds Are Go (1966) and Thunderbird 6 (1968) respectively.

Sophia Myles, Ron Cook, Lex Shrapnel, Bhasker Patel and Nicola Walker all appeared in the 2004 live-action Thunderbirds film, adapted from the series, and the 2015 TV reboot, Thunderbirds Are Go, also included several actors involved in Doctor Who and its spin-off materials, such as David Tennant, David Menkin, Thomas Brodie-Sangster, Angel Coulby, Kayvan Novak, David Graham, Reggie Yates, Sandra Dickinson, Adjoa Andoh and Teresa Gallagher. Crew members Derek Meddings, Ian Scoones, and Michael Wilson also worked on both shows, as did writer Dennis Spooner. John Peel is the author of Thunderbirds, Stingray, Captain Scarlet: The Authorized Programme Guide, as noted on the back of his Virgin Missing Adventures novel Evolution.

Christopher Fowler, writing the foreword for Simon Clark's Telos novella The Dalek Factor, compares the Daleks to Thunderbird 2 in how familiar and iconic they are.